Art for Healing: Painting Your Heart Out is a book about the beginnings of an organization called "Art & Creativity for Healing" which was founded by Laurie Zagon in 2001, and the powerful impact that its programs have had on children and adults suffering from abuse, illness, grief and stress. Art & Creativity for Healing was founded with a vision that the creative process and emotional healing often intersect when words are not adequate, and pain is too deep. The organization's programs are designed to work in conjunction with other therapeutic models including traditional talk therapy augmenting the benefits of these modalities with a unique creative approach. Specifically, the "Art for Healing' methods allow participants to learn a new way of communicating through color that encourages emotional breakthroughs and further enhances the therapy process. Unlike other art programs that employ a loose format of free expression, the "Art for Healing" curriculum contains strictly guided exercises designed to elicit emotional responses.
Based on years of research and experience in the medical community, this proven program helps readers improve their physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health in just 12 weeks through innovative art projects along with spiritual practices and guided imagery. Original.
All across the country, a groundbreaking movement is forming in the field of health care: art and medicine are becoming one, with remarkable results. In major medical centers such as the University of Florida, Duke, University of California, and Harvard Medical School, patients confronting life-threatening illness and depression are using art, writing, music, and Dance to heal body and soul. ¥ A woman with breast cancer who has never made art before finds healing and empowerment by creating sculpture. ¥ A man with AIDS uses journaling to overcome feelings of despair and helplessness. ¥ A woman suffering from depression following her divorce learns to dance for the first time in her life--and in he body's movement she rediscovers a sense of play and joy. ¥ A musician gives meaning to his art by helping people with illness transform their life through music. ¥ Physicians and nurses are beginning to use creativity to complement and enhance their medical practice. Creative Healing presents readers with the inspiring ways in which the arts (painting, writing, music, and dance) can free the spirit to heal. In one volume, the authors detail the transformative power of a diverse range of artistic activity. Michael Samuels, MD, has over twenty-five years of experience working with cancer patients and is the best-selling author of Seeing with the Mind's Eye and The Well Baby Book. He teams up with fellow pioneer Mary Rockwood Lane, RN, PhD, to share their extraordinary findings on the healing powers of the arts. Through guided imagery, personal stories, and practical exercises, they teach you how to find your inner artist-healer, enabling you to improve your health, attitude, and sense of well being by immersing yourself in creative activity. Both Samuels and Lane offer invaluable insight through their personal journeys and extensive groundbreaking research, noting that prayer, art, and healing come from the same source--the human soul. Because there lies an artist and healer within each of us, Creative Healing is an invaluable resource for anyone wishing to discover the beauty of music, dance, writing or art and connect with a deeper part of oneself. Filled with inspiration and guidance, it will help you make changes in your life and the lives of others and gain access to the sacred place where inner peace exists.
A 20th anniversary edition of the art classic that celebrates the intersection of creative expression and spirituality—from one of the greatest living artists of our time Twenty years after the original publication of The Mission of Art, Alex Grey’s inspirational message affirming art’s power for personal catharsis and spiritual awakening is stronger than ever. In this special anniversary edition, Grey—visionary painter, spiritual leader, and best-selling author—combines his extensive knowledge of art history with his own experiences in creating art at the boundaries of consciousness. Grey examines the roles of conscience and intention in the creative process, including practical techniques and exercises useful in exploring the spiritual dimensions of art. Challenging and thought-provoking, The Mission of Art will be appreciated by everyone who has ever contemplated the deeper purpose of creative expression.
Are the images on the wall in a hospital room, doctor's office or rehab center important to the wellbeing of a patient? Undoubtedly, yes. This book explores the opportunity for assisting healing through the utilization of art. Art with Heart: Assisting the Work of Wellness is at once a companion piece to the viewing of artwork in transitional spaces and a how-to guide for the choosing of such art. Within its pages are the tools and inspirations for you to become a champion of art and healing. Enjoy the sample images and make art happen in transitional spaces. Assist in the Work of Wellness.
There is no end of talk and of wondering about 'art' and 'the arts.' This book examines a number of questions about the arts (broadly defined to include all of the arts). Some of these questions come from philosophy. Examples include: · What makes something art? · Can anything be art? · Do we experience "real" emotions from the arts? · Why do we seek out and even cherish sorrow and fear from art when we go out of our way to avoid these very emotions in real life? · How do we decide what is good art? Do aesthetic judgments have any objective truth value? · Why do we devalue fakes even if we -- indeed, even the experts--- can't tell them apart from originals? · Does fiction enhance our empathy and understanding of others? Is art-making therapeutic? Others are "common sense" questions that laypersons wonder about. Examples include: · Does learning to play music raise a child's IQ? · Is modern art something my kid could do? · Is talent a matter of nature or nurture? This book examines puzzles about the arts wherever their provenance - as long as there is empirical research using the methods of social science (interviews, experimentation, data collection, statistical analysis) that can shed light on these questions. The examined research reveals how ordinary people think about these questions, and why they think the way they do - an inquiry referred to as intuitive aesthetics. The book shows how psychological research on the arts has shed light on and often offered surprising answers to such questions.
The author establishes a new foundation for the use and value of clinical empathy that is based on a distinction between treatment and healing, and a model for using psychotherapy as a component of an organized system of care: focused, attuned to the patient's presenting motive, and consistent with our understanding of the relationship between mind and brain.
When soldiers at Fort Carson were charged with a series of 14 murders, PTSD and other "invisible wounds of war" were thrown into the national spotlight. With these events as their starting point, Jean Scandlyn and Sarah Hautzinger argue for a new approach to combat stress and trauma, seeing them not just as individual medical pathologies but as fundamentally collective cultural phenomena. Their deep ethnographic research, including unusual access to affected soldiers at Fort Carson, also engaged an extended labyrinth of friends, family, communities, military culture, social services, bureaucracies, the media, and many other layers of society. Through this profound and moving book, they insist that invisible combat injuries are a social challenge demanding collective reconciliation with the post-9/11 wars.
Based on many years of medical, artistic, therapeutic and anthroposophical experience, the author presents a concentrated foundation for the development of artistic therapy and the training of therapists. Although written with the painting therapist in mind, this clearly-formulated book - the fundamental work in its field - will also be of interest to those involved in medical and general therapeutic work, as well as to serious students of anthroposophy. It includes fifty full-colour examples from Hauschka's course at the School for Artistic Therapy. MARGARETHE HAUSCHKA (1896-1980) studied Medicine in Munich and worked as a doctor at the Ita Wegman Clinic, where she had responsibility for artistic therapy and helped develop Rhythmical Einreibungen, a method of rhythmical massage. After marrying Rudolf Hauschka, she worked at the Biologischen Hospital in Hollriegelskreuth. From 1950, she devoted herself to course and seminar activity, and in 1962 she founded the School for Artistic Therapy and Massage in Boll, Germany.
Let David Elkins, psychologist and former minister, show you how to find authentic, soul-nurturing spirituality outside church or temple walls. Discover your personal path to the sacred and explore new ways to bring nonreligious spirituality into your life.
